The chamber erupted into chaos.
Kael barely had time to process the arrival of the Harbingers of the Vanished before the first spear of crackling energy sliced through the air, colliding with the stone beside him in a deafening explosion. The entire ruin shook, fragments of the past raining from the vaulted ceiling.
They didn't come to negotiate.
The Hollow Ascendant, Vaelcor, reacted instantly. His form blurred, shifting between phases of reality as he vanished from sight. The remaining Hollow warriors followed, flickering like shadows cast in a storm.
Selene grabbed Kael's arm, yanking him behind one of the fractured pillars just as a second Harbinger charged—a towering figure clad in living metal, its segmented armor moving like liquid over its form. The warrior's blade, a weapon humming with an energy Kael had never seen before, sliced through the air where he had just stood.
Kael raised his rifle, fired.
The shot never landed.
Instead, the Harbinger phased, its body slipping through the very fabric of reality as though it were stepping between moments in time.
Damn it.
They fight like the Hollow Order, but it's… different. Stronger. More precise.
Selene didn't hesitate. She moved like a ghost, her blades flashing, steel clashing against the Harbinger's strange weapon. Sparks danced as the two warriors fought, neither yielding, neither breaking.
But Kael could feel it.
This was no ordinary battle.
Something deeper was at play here—something far older than the war he had just been pulled into.
And it was tied to the shards.
---
The Harbingers' Truth
A voice cut through the chaos—layered, distorted, filled with a thousand echoes of itself.
> "You wield what you do not understand, Forsaken child."
Kael turned sharply toward the source.
One of the Harbingers' leaders stood near the second shard, untouched by the battle raging around him. His armor shimmered between forms, shifting through time as though unable to decide which version of itself to remain in.
Unlike the others, he did not attack.
He simply watched Kael.
"You think the Hollow Order's knowledge is truth? That the Crown was stolen from the Architects?" The Harbinger's voice carried weight, not in volume, but in the way it commanded reality itself.
Kael swallowed hard, rifle still raised.
> "What are you saying?"
The Harbinger stepped closer, his presence distorting the very air around him.
> "The Architects were never the first. They were the usurpers, just as your kind has become."
Kael's chest tightened. The shard burned against his ribs.
> "Then who was first?"
For the first time, the Harbinger's form fully stabilized. His mask, unlike the others, bore no expression—just a smooth, reflective void where a face should be.
> "We were."
The world staggered around Kael.
Selene broke away from her fight, her breath sharp. "That's impossible."
But the Harbinger did not waver.
> "We are the firstborn. The true heirs of the Crown. And you, Forsaken child, are standing on the bones of what was once ours."
---
The Firstborn of the Crown
The moment the words left the Harbinger's mouth, the shard inside Kael reacted violently.
Heat flared in his chest, his vision fracturing as flashes of something else flooded his mind.
Not war. Not destruction.
A kingdom.
Not built from stone, nor forged in the blood of conquest. But something pure, something woven from the very threads of existence itself.
And at its center…
A Crown, whole and untouched.
Kael gasped, the vision shattering as quickly as it came. His knees nearly buckled, the weight of the truth sinking into him.
The Fractured Crown did not belong to the Architects.
It did not belong to the Hollow Order.
It belonged to the ones who existed before them all—the Harbingers of the Vanished.
And they had come to take it back.
---
The Breaking Point
The realization barely had time to settle before the battle escalated beyond anything Kael had seen before.
The Hollow Order had re-emerged, their forms now flickering with greater intensity. Vaelcor stood at the head of his warriors, his voice sharp as steel.
> "Lies!"
His presence distorted the very air, his form flickering between past and present, as if struggling to remain in this moment.
> "You, who abandoned reality itself, dare to claim the Crown's birthright?"
The Harbinger leader turned to him, unshaken.
> "And yet, we still exist. Can you say the same, Hollow One?"
A moment of silence.
Then, the chamber erupted into full-scale war.
---
Kael's Transformation Begins
Kael felt the second shard's pull as the battle unfolded around him.
It wanted him to take it.
It needed him to.
His fingers curled toward it—toward the inevitable choice that had been waiting for him since the moment he found the first fragment.
Selene grabbed his wrist.
> "Kael, don't."
Her voice was steady, but her eyes—they held fear.
> "You don't know what happens if you take another piece."
But Kael wasn't sure he had a choice anymore.
His first shard was already changing him. His body was growing attuned to the Crown, the visions coming more frequently, his connection to the fragments strengthening.
He could feel the war inside himself, the conflicting truths of the Hollow Order and the Harbingers, the weight of the past crushing down on the present.
And if he didn't take the shard…
Someone else would.
His gaze lifted to the war unfolding before him—Selene caught in the clash of two impossible forces, warriors phasing between time itself, the very fabric of reality tearing apart.
If he was going to survive this, if he was going to stop what was coming, then he needed power.
More than he had.
More than any of them could comprehend.
His hand closed over the second shard.
And the world broke apart.